Game versus Sport, the eternal balancing act of golf, dictates that even mechanically-iffy swings can be successful given good impact conditions and an overall great short game.
But there is a reason you don’t see anyone anywhere swinging like Moe Norman, the man who could hit the ball practically dead straight – and we’re talking so little side-spin that the first time Moe was ever analyzed on a launch monitor, it was thought to be malfunctioning.
This swing apparently produced a 367 yard drive, but a grain of salt warning, it was on a Scottish links course (the King’s Course at Gleneagles in Scotland) and we know how the ball runs half the distance of the total drive (joking, but close) … but anyway…
Padraig Harrington is the swinger in question here, and by the PGA Champions Tour caption, they apparently think his footwork is to be admired (we know they wouldn’t insult a player in their feature Tweets, so we have to assume a positive tone here).
I would like to show you all the driver swing of one Jack Nicklaus from the 1963 match against Sam Snead.
These are the only two golf swings from the PGA Tour that you should be looking at to begin with, in my humble opinion, if you want a golf swing that will give you everything from speed, distance, accuracy and consistency.
Words definitely matter when you’re speaking or writing about the swing, because if the diagram, picture or video were sufficient, we’d simply watch and implement, wouldn’t you agree?
In that regard, let’s just get rid of the word “shift” when it comes to the Classic Golf Swing, particularly the MCS version of it, because there is no “shift” in the optimal swing.
Thanks to BM for reminding me of the existence of overhead video showing Jack Nicklaus’ driver swing.
If you’re interested in Jack’s “Golf My Way” video, you can find it here on Youtube. The overhead part from which I took the below shots to make a couple of Gif.s is at 45:00 of the video.
It’s not a huge surprise to hear that the Mad Scientist of golf has completely unraveled, but it is news to me.
When I mused in yesterday’s posting that BDC was going backwards in his quest for the swing he wants (the “perfect swing?”), it was simply due to observing him swinging in a way that I was when I had only had two seasons of swing research under my belt.
I don’t know if anyone has seen this clip of Bryson DeChambeau on the range working out after missing the cut.
I have to say, if the stuff below is what he’s working on, it’s no wonder he missed the cut and he’s way off.
I mean, way off.
One of the reasons I was able to drive a golf ball 350 yards and up back in my late 30s and early 40s even while swinging with too much leading arm (left-dominant) was because I knew where impact was.
I may have been guilty of trying to pull the club through impact with the leading arm while still trying to hit the ball with my right hand – when I didn’t do it perfectly, I would smash the ball 350 yards, but when I did do it perfectly, I snap-hooked the ball off the planet or sliced it over 2 fairways.
I’m referring of course to the right-handed golf swing, so lefties swinging lefty would be the same thing here if you are left-handed and swing left.
But in the land of hockey, there are so many more right-handed Canadians who play golf left-handed than the average nation.
I got back out to the lab today and the biggest takeaway I have from the session, which I’ll remember to reiterate when discussing my data collection, is that the SC300i portable launch monitor is not really working to my satisfaction.
Other than the ball speed, which I would assume is accurate because it uses Doppler radar, I don’t believe any of the other data is reliable, however I know how far the yardage is off (and it seems pretty consistent).
WAX Golf 